


Shielded

by Domenika Marzione (domarzione)



Series: Preserved [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, What-If, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-21
Updated: 2014-11-21
Packaged: 2018-02-26 10:57:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2649461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/Domenika%20Marzione
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if... after the rescue of the 107th, Bucky Barnes never becomes a Howling Commando? What if recovered POW Sergeant James Barnes is instead sent home, his war over, while Steve Rogers's continues on?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shielded

“You got anything to send home, sir? I’m playing postman.”

Steve looked up from the map to where Gabe was waving a few envelopes, letters to be mailed now that they were back far enough behind friendly lines that such was possible. All of the envelopes were fat; the Commandos tended to write meandering epics that were abruptly cut off when a chance to send them was found.

“Yeah, lemme find ‘em,” Steve said, reaching down to his pack and digging through his things until he pulled out two slightly crumpled envelopes to hand over to Gabe. Both had the same surname and address in Brooklyn on the outside, but the letter to Bucky was a good deal thicker than the one to the rest of the family. The thinner one might be better appreciated, however. Bucky would read his letter, Steve knew, and send his own in reply, but things still weren’t right between then and they probably weren’t going to get that way so long as Steve was sending his correspondence from a battlefield while Bucky was back home learning the ins and outs of the Long Island Railroad.

Steve didn’t regret what he’d done to get Bucky out of the Army after the rescue of the 107th; no matter what Bucky believed, he hadn’t sold anything to the SSR that had a greater value to him than knowing that Bucky was safe. He couldn’t regret it when he still woke up sometimes from nightmares where he hadn’t gotten to Bucky in time or, worse, where he had simply run past the room in pursuit of Zola. But he could and did regret that his actions had caused the first real rupture in a twenty year friendship. Bucky had more or less forgiven him for agreeing to Project Rebirth, at least, but engineering his discharge and (in Bucky’s eyes) sending him from Steve’s side where he should be, that was a betrayal that would need much longer to get over.

”Don’t think there’s going to be anything for us,” Gabe said as he tapped the expanded stack of envelopes on the end of the table to neaten them. The SSR knew where the Commandos had been headed, but whether they’d forward the mail before they’d gotten confirmation of arrival was something else. “We can hope, though.”

"Or we can wait," Steve countered, since he knew as well as Gabe did that the SSR was more likely to use their letters from home as a guarantee of good behavior — and a prompt report from Steve — than to treat them as eagerly-awaited property belonging to someone else. But he’d checked in already, carrying on a lengthy and coded conversation with Peggy that he hoped meant more to the SSR analysts than it did to him. The last couple of weeks had seemed a waste of time, busywork with a body count, and he might have intimated as much to Peggy, who’d taken umbrage because she’d tasked them. But her ire probably did not stretch to the point where she’d delay the shipping of mail and supplies to the Commandos.

"Or we can wait," Gabe agreed because he knew how things worked as well as Steve did. "Catch you later, sir."

With Gabe gone, Steve was alone. The boys were all off doing Lord knew what (or at least Sarge knew what, he hoped) and, surrounded as they were by the ‘real’ Army, Steve probably wouldn’t see them again until tomorrow, would instead have to grit his teeth and smile and play the proper officer like he was still on stage selling war bonds. Like he cared about rank and advancement and all of the pomp and circumstances that officers, especially field grade officers, tended to fixate on and fortify like ramparts. Depending on who was talking, Steve was a showgirl, a science experiment, or a savage for leading a group of throat-slitters and while he personally didn’t care what the brass in general thought of him, Colonel Phillips, whose opinion did concern him, had drummed it into him that it mattered nonetheless. So Steve would stick to officer country, play the dutiful courtier to his betters, and hope Izzy was having a more productive evening.

Izzy – Sergeant Yitzak Goldman, from Chicago by way of Minsk – was very good at being productive, especially in tough conditions. Like an army camp where everyone knew the Commandos were around and were either locking away the good silverware or digging out a pencil for an autograph. Izzy was a tiny little rat-faced fellow whose size belied his ferocious will and surprising physical strength – Steve recognized so much of himself in Izzy that he sometimes forgot he wasn’t a tiny little guy himself anymore. (The resulting vaudeville routine cleared that confusion right up.) Izzy knew how to get anything out of anyone, usually by talking them into submission in an accent that waxed and waned depending on the context. Izzy’s favorite subject was The Worker’s Plight, followed shortly after by The Worker’s Paradise; he was a committed socialist who had enlisted to fight fascists and Jew-killers in that order. And he was well-suited to the task. He’d been working in a slaughterhouse before Pearl Harbor and was a master of knives as a result; he’d taught all of the Commandos, including and especially Steve, how to use them effectively, a necessary skill set for their line of work.

Izzy found him the next morning, a cup of coffee in each hand. “It’s Sanka,” he warned as he offered one to Steve handle-out, as if the heat of the cup wasn’t bothering him, which it wasn’t. Izzy’s asbestos hands were another part of his legend. “But it tastes better than the shit with caffeine in it. They might actually be using shit to turn it brown.”

Steve accepted the cup with a nod of thanks. “And how did the night pass in the bosom of the proletariat?” he asked, taking a sip.

It wasn’t meant teasingly and Izzy took it at face value. “Comfortably, sir. Got some things done that needed doing.”

Which could mean anything and Izzy wasn’t going to tell him what until he had to, if he ever did. Between them they had a language made up entirely of raised eyebrows and placid looks that conveyed everything that needed to be discussed between an officer and a team sergeant and, with fewer eyes on them, between friends. He and Izzy couldn’t be true friends so long as both of them wore uniforms of any type, but they could be friendly enough that it would be hard to distinguish a difference. Izzy was the first friend — or ‘friend’ — he’d had who’d never known him Before; Izzy knew that there had been a Before, of course, but he treated it as an abstract concept. He’d never seen Steve small and weak, had never seen him need protection in any way that physical prowess could provide, and Steve didn’t think Izzy could really imagine there ever being a time when Steve had been at a constant risk of getting beaten to a pulp. Which was not to say that Izzy, like Bucky, didn’t think Steve could do with a better sense of self-preservation, but Izzy, unlike Bucky, did not have decades of having to serve as a substitute for that missing self-preservation to color all their present interactions. Steve wouldn’t have thought he’d ever want to distance himself from Before in any fashion — Doctor Erskine’s dying words had been to make him promise not to — but… but he didn’t think he was any worse a man for wanting to stand on his present than always lean on his past. Everyone from Brooklyn would always see the tiny fella he’d been and sometimes, especially when he was lonely and worn down and feeling very far from home, he was grateful for that. But his future, however it came, would be shaped by the big fella he was now and sometimes it was nice to have people whose judgment of that man wasn’t based on a size comparison.

"Anything I need to do?" Steve asked. Izzy was a master at what he did, but there were some things that even the cleverest NCO couldn’t do without an officer’s touch. Even a relatively junior officer without a lot of cachet or a lot of friends. Which could sometimes inadvertently play directly into Izzy’s deeply-felt politics, but Steve didn’t sense a rant about the bourgeoisie on the horizon — there was no fire in Izzy’s eyes, just the kind of exhaustion that two nights of good sleep without having to stand a picket wasn’t going to cure.

"Down the line, yeah," Izzy replied, taking a sip of his own coffee. "But it’ll be closer to when we head out."

Which meant Izzy wanted Steve to do things that were going to get people pissed off at him. Steve gave him a look to indicate that he wasn’t being particularly subtle. Izzy just shrugged. “Not like they’re gonna start liking you anyway, sir. They’ll smile for the cameras when they have to, but they know where you came from and they’re never going to forgive you for it.”

Steve shook his head, drained the coffee cup, and handed it back to Izzy. “Just make sure we can live with the consequences, yeah?”

"Always, sir."

**Author's Note:**

> [This story was posted to tumblr](http://laporcupina.tumblr.com/post/103146847234/captain-america-drabble-preserved-prologue), if you'd like to do something with it there.


End file.
